Telemann on the pedestal

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Telemann was born four years before JS Bach, and at the time of his death at the age of 86, Mozart had already started composing. Among major composers of the last 500 years, only Verdi and Palestrina lived longer.

With JS Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, Telemann is one of the four great pillars of the Baroque era. He was also perhaps the most prolific of all composers - with about 3,000 works to his name - and he maintained extremely high standards.

Telemann spent most of his creative life in Hamburg, where he was Director of Music of the city's five churches as well as fulfilling civic duties by composing occasional music, chamber pieces and a prodigious number of concertos for diverse combinations of instruments.

His religious music is firmly in the North German protestant (Lutheran) tradition. Many of his non-religious scores are known as Tafelmusik (or 'banquet music') which was written as musical wall paper, largely drowned out by the clink of champagne flutes, the rustle of taffeta and the murmur of A-list gossip when the beau monde of Hamburg gathered.

One of the pieces we'll hear this week is an excerpt from his Ino, which was composed when he was 84 and demonstrates that his creative fires burned brightly until the end.

Telemann was a friend of Bach and became the godfather of one of his children.

His composing career extended beyond the Baroque and into the Galant or early Classic period, whose style is epitomised by Bach's sons, CPE Bach and JC Bach.

Georg Philipp Telemann, after a lost painting by Ludwig Michael Schneider, 1750. (Wikicommons)